Tabloid victim gets secret payout

London: Journalists have established the identity of a second person to whom the News of the World's owners have paid secret damages, following the hacking of her phone. She is Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser at the Professional Footballers Association.

The emergence of a second victim whose silence was effectively purchased in a sealed legal settlement, comes as News International, the tabloid's owner, issued a statement after three days of near-silence, about the hacking allegations.

Denying any systematic corporate policy of illegal behaviour, News International confirmed it had paid damages to Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, who sued the company for hacking into messages on his mobile phone.

The Murdoch organisation's statement said after the Clive Goodman case "the only other evidence connecting News of the World reporters to information gained as a result of accessing a person's voicemail emerged in April last year, during the course of the Taylor litigation."

The Guardian understands Armstrong also sued the News of the World and is one of two other figures who received costs and damages on condition that she signed a confidentiality agreement.

Further evidence, which has been in the possession of Scotland Yard for some years, identifies a so far unnamed News of the World reporter who typed transcripts of more than 30 taped messages from the two hacking targets.

It is understood the police documents name a second, senior, reporter to whom these transcripts were sent and a middle-ranking executive who offered the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire a sizeable cash bonus if he delivered the necessary facts for an exposure story.

Scotland Yard also obtained a further tape recording, sources say, on which a journalist identified only by his first name is heard receiving detailed instructions from Mulcaire to enable him to hack into Taylor's messages himself.